Every large or small community both of civilized and barbarous men has its traditional heroes. The memory of some one person or other who in his time stood out sharply from his fellows is preserved by them in tradition or by the written word often with fantastic embellishments of his person or his acts.
For example, we Americans revere the historic signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 and our first president George Washington and can hardly realize that he possessed human frailties.
Reverence for the past and its principal actors tends to be universal and they become heroic figures to posterity in the passage of time.
Yet, as Americans, we know too little of the doings of the people of past generations who lived their lives in our several localities. These pioneers selected land for their farms and bore the hardships of an isolated and primitive life with the wild beasts always and the Indians often as enemies.
They finally fought a war with their kinsmen across the seas to establish their right to live their own lives in their own way without interference from the homeland. They made a new government that has served as a model for the entire world since.
A new book, "Frontiersmen of the Adirondacks," tells us more about the people like Lincoln, Jackson and Johnson who were born in log houses and were the earliest ancestors that settled here and won our freedom.
The economist Albert O. Hirschman said, "We are now told that the presence of war-like Indians in North America and the permanent conflict between them and the Anglo-Saxon settlers was a great advantage, because it made necessary methodical, well-planned, and gradual advances toward an interior which always remained in close logistic and cultural contact with the established communities to the East."
The lesson for today's leaders is: Developing businesses and countries requires more than capital. They need to practice in making difficult economic decisions. Economic progress is the product of successful habits--and there is no better teacher than a little adversity.
Source: Cyrus Durey: Frontiersmen of the Adirondacks: Economic Development in Early North America ($1.99 Kindle ebook)